Incomplete Redirect for Domain Migration?

[Kingalan1]

One year ago we migrated domain "X" to domain "Y". We did the proper redirects and used Google Search Console. Everything was done by the book. Now when we enter "Site: X" in Google about 650 results listing the old domain still come up. When clicked these redirect to the new domain.

My SEO says that the old domain should not be indexed by Google, that these pages with the old domain should not appear.  Is this in fact an incomplete domain migration?

Our search traffic dropped considerably when we migrated the domain a year ago. My SEO thinks this may explain the drop.

Thanks, 
Alan

[seoelevated]

Alan,

Spot checking, I looked at a few of your redirected old domain pages which are still showing up in the index. Here are my thoughts:

• For the ones which are redirected properly, you might be experiencing a ranking dip because the old domain name contained keywords better matching search terms. for example, if a search contains "office" or "space", it could be that your old domain was perceived by Google as a stronger match. Although Google doesn't place as much weight on exact or partial match domain names as was once the case, it is still a ranking factor, from my recent experience.
• URLs such as http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods seem to be properly redirected. From what I can tell, the redirects look fine.
• Other URLs such as http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/Chelsea are being redirected to a non-existent page, with a 404 error. Probably because you are using a pattern redirect which is preserving the requested file path. For any of these which previously had rank equity, I would put some effort into redirecting to some relevant existing page.
• I do see that your old URLs here http, and the new ones were https. The redirects are working fine, but you might want to check that when you did the change of address, it was on the http version of the old property (to the new domain). Even though we're not supposed to use change of address to go from http to https migrations, it is still necessary to change the address from the specific version of the old property. So, if you previously had both http and https versions of your old property, you want to make sure you've done the change of address tool for the http one.

[BlueprintMarketing]

i will update you  tomorrow but I am thinking algorithm index errors

[Kingalan1]

Hi Tom:

The old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com

The new domain is: https://www.metro-manhattan.com/

The google search:

site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com

Returns 794 results for the old pages. This does not seem normal.

Any ideas?

[BlueprintMarketing]

A year ago you changed domains and your old domain still shows up in Google?

If you show me the domains I can tell you what is happening but you

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049?hl=en&ref_topic=6033084
• https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/make-or-break-your-site-migration
• https://searchengineland.com/site-migration-seo-checklist-dont-lose-traffic-286880
• https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-change-domain-names-keep-your-rankings-in-google/

Map all changed URLs from old to new

You should have a spreadsheet that lists every old URL and every new URL.

**QUOTE: **“if you really want to move your website then you should try to [use] 301 redirects” John Mueller, Google

301 Redirects are an incredibly important and often overlooked area of search engine optimisation. Properly implemented 301 Redirects are THE cornerstone SEO consideration in any website migration project.

QUOTE:  “If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommend that you use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page.” Google, 2018

If you fail to implement proper redirects when migrating a website from one domain to another you will instantly lose any traffic to your website you currently enjoy, with new visitors often greeted by the dreaded 404 page, and in 2019, soft-404s applied by Google if they do not trust the redirect in a way that helps visitors.

Tom